Bead Soup Blog Party - Meet my Partner

It is time for Lori Anderson's Bead Soup Party for 2013. This year's event
has over 500 jewelry artists from around the world. The largest Bead Soup Party yet.  I am thrilled to be a part of this party again this year.  

Each year Lori Anderson undertakes this massive project and spends countless
hours matching up partners, arranging schedules, sending out emails to all the participants and Lori does an awesome job.  She is truly the queen of Bead Soup Parties and has earned a reputation this event.

This year I am going to be participating in the second reveal on April 6th.  
My schedule this spring has been quite hectic trying to get things arranged
around the events of my three children.

My partner this year is Laura Guenther of Blue Antiquities.  Laura was my partner last year and my a slight twist of fate I again was matched up with Laura.  

I became acquainted with Laura in last years Bead Soup Party.  It was the first party for both of us and I thoroughly enjoyed working with Laura.  Laura lives in Georgia with her husband and three children.  Georgia is a favorite state of mine as all three of my children have attended the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah Georgia and my husband and I have spent many years visiting that city and somehow having a partner in that same state give me a connection.  

Laura is a very talented artist.  She does some fantastic enamel work and has recently started using mica in her work. She has done some some great pieces using this medium.  I am always impressed with Laura’s talent.  Laura has an Etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/blueantiquities where she sells her beautiful artwork, she does art shows, and her packaging for her jewelry is as awesome as the jewelry itself.  She is also a published artist having her work published in the most recent Winter Issue of Belle Armoire.

Here is just a sampling of Laura’s work:


I can’t wait to see what Laura is going to do with her soup again this year and I look forward to working with her.  Come back soon to see the soups received and sent.

Rebel Mouse - Great Tool for Summarizing Your Favorites

Rebel mouse just added to my blog!

RebelMouse organizes your online presence into a beautiful, dynamic and social site - in minutes. Rebel Mouse provides a quick way to review your favorite blogs, facebook pages, twitter accounts, pinterest pins, Magazine sites and more.  By setting up a user profile and adding the sites, feeds and RSS codes for your favorites you can get an organized view of all your favorite things on just one page.  It's quite easy to set up and get going.  

I just recently started using Rebel Mouse and I love the way that all my favorite sites and feeds are summarized into a beautiful front page. I am going to be doing a tutorial on setting up your own personal Rebel Mouse in the near future but in the meantime, I have added my own Rebel Mouse account to my blog for you to check out. This way when you visit my blog you get a little bonus. You can check out my Rebel Mouse by clicking the Tab above and it is live - as things update so does the Rebel Mouse screen. 

Rebel Mouse gives you a summary of the information that is being fed into the screen, but if you want to see or read more simply click on the link and it takes you to the original source.

Take a peek.  Click the tab and if you like what you see then I would love to have you follow me on Rebel Mouse.  

Seam Binding Challenge

Recently over on Artisan Whimsy,  I was selected as one of the participants in Karen Lackey's Hand Dyed Seam Binding Ribbon Giveaway and Challenge.  Karen makes some fantastic hand dyed seam binding and as part of the challenge, she sent 20 lucky people samples of her ribbon.  The challenge was to create a piece of jewelry using this seam binding and share it on our blog.   The ribbon I received was a lovely blue/green, gorgeous!

When I started to work with the ribbon, I was having a little bit of a creative block.  I started looking  thru my bead stash and pulled out some beads and waxed linen cording that I thought would work.  I stumbled upon a ceramic focal bead that I had been given in a bead swap and it worked.  

Here are the pieces that I put together.  The first piece is a wrapped bangle with a large stone focal.  The second is a necklace that I created with the ceramic focal bead and some beads I had in my stash.  I originally was going to use the ribbon loose on the necklace but decided instead to braid it to give the necklace a little more interest.  

Unfortunately the photos do not do the ribbon justice.  The weather and lack of sunshine outside in my neck of the woods makes taking photographs very difficult.  Now head on over to Artisan Whimsy  to read Karen's blog post and to see the other participants.  Thanks Karen for allowing me to participate and for your generous giveaway.